Lecture #10: McDonald's

1. How did McDonald's restaurants fill consumers' needs?
They were built along the new Interstate Highways, and didn't require people to drive into busy downtown areas. Fast food restaurants were also very quick and convenient. McDonald's also standardized its recipes so the food would be consistent at different restaurants all over the United States (and eventually the world).

2. How did McDonald's simultaneously grow as a company while also dramatically increasing its profits?
The recipes were standardized, so people knew what they were going to get (quality-wise) wherever they were. The fries were promoted because when people would come in for lunch for a hamburger, all employees had to ask if the person wanted fries with that, so if people didn't originally want fries, they were tempted into buying them, making profits go up for McDonald's.

McDonald's was also franchised, where individuals would build and operate the restaurant, but would pay a fee to use the McDonald's recipes, building setups, name, etc. McDonald's would then received part of the individual restaurant's profits. By having all of these stores in different areas, operated by different people, there were more, different foods created to fit their consumers' needs, like the Big Mac (for steel miller workers in Pittsburgh) or the Filet O Fish (for Catholics in Cincinatti).

3. Why has McDonald's become a magnet for political theorists?
That no two countries that had McDonald's in them ever went to war. This may be because the globalization of these countries created shared values between them.